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Dessert

Puff Omelet

A baked omelette made with sweet milk, corn starch, eggs, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Puff Omelet

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, mix sweet milk and corn starch with a little cold milk until smooth.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

Finish and bake

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) until puffed and golden.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg whites trap air when folded in, lifting the omelette so it puffs while baking.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture so it holds its body and supports the egg structure.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid base that sets into a soft, custardy interior.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Deflating the whipped whites by stirring hard loses the air that makes the omelette rise, so the result bakes flat and dense.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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